I represent the fifth generation of my family to live in Maryland and have spent about 35 years of my life here in the state. For the past 15 of those years, I’ve lived in the DC suburbs of Silver Spring in Montgomery County, solidly in the greater Washington DC area (comprising not only DC [...]

When I do usability testing, particularly with teams that have not been involved in the process before, I often find myself providing a mini lesson about what usability testing is (and is not!), how the process is going to work, and what they’re going to get out of it in the end. Beyond explaining the [...]

A family member recently voiced concern about all the traveling that I have been doing. He told me the stress of all the travel seemed unsustainable in the long term, and he couldn’t imagine that I would be able to continue doing so much business travel until I retire many years in the future. I [...]

In the decades that I’ve done user research, nearly all of my research has been conducted in English. While I’ve done some research in other countries and with products in other languages, either the product itself was still an English-language product or, when I didn’t think it would harm the research effort, I got bilingual [...]

Work flow was good… Four weeks ago I was feeling pretty confident about the remainder of 2017. A client had locked in the last week of November for an international usability study and another client sounded reasonably confident that they’d want a large three-part local usability study immediately after, before their 2017 funds expired. I [...]

On turning 40 Since my teenage years, I’ve always tried to do some kind of exercise. In those days, I’d go running with my father, go biking on the streets of Baltimore County and go swimming at the pool where I worked as a lifeguard. While my father was – and in fact still is [...]

For the most part, my user research and evaluation freelance work comes through referrals. That means I spend my business development time on being visible and present in the UX/tech world, and then work comes through either people who know me personally or who refer me to others who need user research support. After the [...]

I often hear from my UX colleagues that they are thinking of going off on their own. They tell me that they’re ready to make the leap to freelancing and think that they have found their first gig – maybe it’s a 3-month contract, or 6-month or full-year contract. Often it’s full-time so they know [...]

I largely do user experience (UX) research activities such as usability testing, cognitive walkthroughs, ethnography, interviews and focus groups all centered around how users and potential users would interact with existing, updated and new interfaces. Sessions and activities are typically scheduled to last about an hour for each participant. Like my marketing research colleagues, I [...]

For much of my UX career, I’ve been pretty solidly tied to the Washington DC region. While I’ve never committed to any one specific industry, just given the amount of Federal UX work that has been available locally, Federal-related contracts have been responsible for a decent percentage of my overall consulting revenue. Although I’ve been [...]

Right at the anniversary of my first Lynda.com / LinkedIn Learning course, I had the opportunity to head out once again to sunny Carpinteria, California. I got to record two new courses, both focused on a topic near to my heart - being a freelancer! My first course, Planning a Career in User Experience (UX), [...]

I’ve enjoyed working as a freelancer for the past 8 years and have largely found that I can maintain a workload that matches what can be done by myself and Edie (the second person on my two-person team). Occasionally, however, the workload goes beyond what two people can do, and at those points I have [...]

Most qualitative usability testing studies that I do involve the creation of a screener early on in the research process. The screener is the product of a necessary effort to determine not only who specifically the expected users are of a product, but also how to best allow a recruiter to find appropriate participants that [...]

As a user experience (UX) consultant/freelancer with a small business, whenever there is a new project opportunity, I need to decide whether or not to accept the project. I have to think about how well the project fits with the existing skillset and schedule for myself and one staff person, as well as consider the [...]

In high school I was that kid that in theory was supposed to get top grades. I was serious in class, spoke intelligently and appeared studious. Yet my grades were not great – not terrible, just not what teachers were expecting of me. The truth was, I just wasn’t a perfectionist in school, not even [...]

At least once a day I get an email from a recruiter offering some new job for which the recruiter thinks I’d be a great fit. While I do appreciate knowing that I’m findable and in lots of databases of potential candidates, I never find that I can give an unqualified yes to submit my [...]

While “white-labeling” has been associated most commonly with limited-edition musical recordings, it has also come to refer to a situation where a product or service is provided to a company and that company then sells that product or service under their own brand. For a UX freelancer, this means simultaneously maintaining a personal identity as [...]

Since I left the W-2 world in 2008, my work flow has been pretty much non-stop with an average of perhaps 35 hours a week of billable time and another 10 hours per week of non-billable time. The non-billable time was spent largely on things related to exposure in the larger UX and tech community: [...]

For most of my career as a UX consultant, I have worked full time on some company’s payroll. A number of years back, one very large consulting organization hired me for a 6-month, full-time gig, working on site for a client. When, at the appointed time, the project concluded successfully, the consulting firm didn’t immediately [...]

Investors are advised to make sure that they have diversity in their portfolio. By diversifying into multiple types of investments and different kinds of industries, there is a safety in knowing that if one type of investment fails, there are other investments that will still succeed. The same is true for User Experience (UX) professionals. [...]

I met someone recently who is a consultant at a large organization. We started talking about our various consulting efforts, and I mentioned that I do a lot of work with government agencies. “Oh,” he said, “does that mean you are on the GSA schedule?” I explained that I am not. When I mentioned that [...]

[Update 3/29/13: This post was part of the basis for Lebson, Cory. "Care About Your UX Career? Network Now!" User Experience Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 1 (First Quarter 2013).] By the time Twitter emerged into the public sphere, I was already primed as a regular LinkedIn and Facebook user to the value of social media, so [...]

[Update 3/29/13: This post was part of the basis for Lebson, Cory. "Care About Your UX Career? Network Now!" User Experience Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 1 (First Quarter 2013).] It was 2003 and a good friend from high school who had moved to Japan sent me a LinkedIn invitation. It said that he wanted me [...]

A client hired Lebsontech for user experience related work, but partway through the process decided to use Lebsontech staff to address some other priorities that weren’t specifically user experience (UX) related. Since I knew funds were limited, using the funds and my team for this alternate purpose would seriously limit the time and funding available [...]

I get at least one email message or phone call from a recruiter almost daily. They want to tell me about a great job opportunity. Would I be willing to become an employee of their company (or in many cases of their client)? If so, they want to talk further and see if I would [...]

I spoke with a colleague on the phone last week. We hadn't talked on the phone before but found that we had a lot in common. We both run small user research firms and both enjoy doing similar kinds of user research. There was a brief awkward moment when the person said that their company [...]

Twice last year, I was asked by job assistance agencies - one here in the DC area and one up in Baltimore - if I would speak about how to use social networking to help get a job. I spoke at both with a presentation titled "The Brand is You: Marketing Yourself with LinkedIn, Facebook, [...]

Recently, a client said to me of another consultant that this consultant did not exhibit a passion for the work or for the company. This consultant generally produced good quality work, but that lack of passion was a serious impediment to the company’s perception of his consulting skills. I started thinking about this. Do consultants [...]